In a moment, when he had gone, she looked again in the mirror. It showed
her a woman who would not steal, unless she could do so undetectably; a
woman who would not forge, because she did not know how. Crimes
ridiculous or merely terrific she was too shrewd to commit. But there
are crimes that the law cannot reach. There are cards, too, that fate
may deal.
After looking at the woman, she looked at the cards. They were
dreamlike. Even so, they needed stacking. Mrs. Austen arranged them
carefully, ran them up her sleeve and floated to the room where Margaret
waited.
As she entered, Margaret turned to her. Her face had that disquieting
loveliness which Spanish art gave to the Madonna, the loveliness of
flesh eclipsed certainly by the loveliness of the soul, but still flesh,
still lovely.
At sight of it Mrs. Austen experienced the admiration tinctured with the
vitriol of jealousy that some mothers inject. Mrs. Austen had been a
belle in the nights when there were belles but her belledom, this girl,
who was not a belle, outshone. Yet the glow of it while necessarily
physical had in it that which was moral. Unfortunately the radiance of
moral beauty only those who are morally beautiful can perceive. Mrs.
Austen was blind to it. It was her daughter's physical beauty that she
always saw and which, though she was jealous of it, had, she knew, a
value, precisely as beauty had a value in Circassia where, before the
war, it fetched as much as a hundred Turkish pounds. In New York, where
amateurs are keener and beauty is more rare, it may run into millions.
Commercially conscious of that, Mrs. Austen felt for the cards and
carelessly produced one.
"Do you know, I believe we are to have a shower. Your young man got off
just in time."
Margaret, who had glanced at the prostrate nymph, looked at her upright
mother. "Do you mean that Keith has come--and gone?"
Mrs. Austen sat down and extracted another card. "My dear, when I went
below he was coming in. We----"
Margaret, with her usual directness, interrupted. "But he is coming
back?"
"That depends on you."
"On me? How? What do you mean?"
"That you must do as you like, of course. But if you elect to see him,
for goodness' sake don't refer to it."
"Refer to it!" Margaret exclaimed. "Refer to what?"
"The vestal whom we saw this afternoon."
"I don't understand."